


roll a hard six

by strangesmallbard



Series: snapshots of swan queen [5]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Battlestar Galactica Fusion, Alternate Universe - Space, Angst, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 14:13:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11128521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangesmallbard/pseuds/strangesmallbard
Summary: regina is forty-second in line for the presidency, and number forty-one has just died outside caprican airspace.





	roll a hard six

**Author's Note:**

> i've been wanting to do a bsg au FOR AGES. i hope to do a much bigger one some day, but in the meantime i hope you all enjoy! so say we all.

(”there’s a prophecy, you know. one of those myths you learn about as a kid. a savior, born from a past full of troubles, will lead her struggling people to the land where they will know peace.”)

1. 

regina is forty-second in line for the presidency. its kept her mother at bay enough to stay on leonis and out of her life, but now–

“mom,” henry says, voice more quiet than she’s ever heard. his three month old scowl is gone and she doesn’t want it back, she wants him to look at her with warmth again, but anything, _anything_ is better than his stretched brow, pinched mouth, his fingernails digging into her arm. “mom, what’s going on?”

oh, she could lie to him. sing away the nightmares just outside. 

“ma’am?” she hears. she can only focus on her son, the spool of numbers in her hand, the chip in her mauve nail polish. 

regina is forty-second in line for the presidency, and forty-one has just died outside caprican airspace. regina was a teacher once and never donned a pencil skirt again. regina had a horse outside caprica city. rocinante. regina adopted a son even though everyone said she couldn’t. regina–

“someone,” she says, and clears away a storm in her throat. she holds her son’s hand. she rolls back her shoulders and fixes that captain with enough of a glare to press him backwards into competency. “someone get me a bible.”

if only mother could see her now.

2.

here is emma “nike” swan on a good day: 

flight-suit hanging off her waist, the good kind of sweat on the back of her neck, feeling like maybe, maybe _nike_  could suit her after-all, like she doesn’t have bigger and better shoes to fill, the sweet hum of her viper, trading freshly won cubits for a geminon cigar with lucas in the barracks, circling numbers for apartments she’d maybe like to live in after, after.

after.

it’s not a good day.

“what the _frak_ do you meanthe _president_ isn’t meeting us at the rendezvous? isn’t the president dead?” emma stops zipping up her flight suit to stare.

“new one stepped up. regina mills.”

“who? wait, the speaker from the education department at the ceremony earlier? how–”

“it’s not for you to worry about,” commander nolan says with his usual small, thin lipped smile, the one that’s supposed to be calming and is not frakking calming when frakking cylons are _murdering her fam–_

emma swallows bile. she bites it too. “i could show up on colonial one. tell she’s being–”

nolan sighs, and its sharp enough to shut her up. “don’t veer off course, nike.” he manages a quirk of a grin. “and bring in the cat.”

she manages one back. she manages a salute.

she doesn’t manage to follow orders.

3.

regina mills is standing on the _galactica_  with her son’s hand in hers, and the fate of the fleet in another. her heels click on the metal underneath and she wishes she could shuck them out an airlock.

commander david nolan, whose hand she shook earlier, who argued with her about networking and legacies, does not look like he’s currently staving off the aftershocks of a war. except around the eyes.

“madame president,” he says, carefully, uncertainly. her neck flushes with annoyance. he looks at henry, who is taking in the galactica in active duty–viper pilots whizzing by her hastily created presidential team, engineers half-suited from sleep pushing crucial pieces of tech on carts. “i understand this is probably an undertaking you didn’t antici–”

“commander, is there a reason your viper squad leader _,_ this _emma swan_ , showed up on my landing pad and demanded to speak with me while i was in the middle of something _incredibly_  important?”

4.

“nike, nike, come in, nike. _emma._ ” nolan’s fist is clenched over the comm. “please.” regina hears gwen suck in a breath over swan’s feed, and the whole cic caves into this one singular moment, the static overbearing. 

nolan’s eyes meet hers. there’s a desperation sunk into the folds on his forehead that regina frankly never wanted to see.

“commander,” she says, firmly. “we have to _go._ the cylons–”

“i am not leaving my best pilot–”

something constricts in regina’s chest, sharp and in the shape of henry’s undying, unfounded adoration for nike, who’s about to get them all killed. (in the shape of emma swan, who made him smile for the first time in weeks.) “this fleet has fifty thousand people, and one of them will–”

he slams a fist down. “she’s still out there! we haven’t given them enough time–”

“sir,” gwen says, startled. “sir, there’s a cylon ship coming our way–”

regina shakes her head and presses forward. nolan stands tall. she hears marian’s quiet _oh, frak_  behind her, even from behind a clipboard. “commander, i know you still think i’m some silly schoolteacher, but mark my words, i will use the full force of the law of all twelve colonies in order to–”

“hey! is some…on the comms?” 

gwen lets out a breath. “lieutenant swan, it’s good to hear your voice.”

“good to hear the fleet’s still flying. i’m elbows deep in cylon ship right now so i’d really like it if no one shot me down?”

nolan lets out a laugh. “roger that. bring her in.”

after the flight dek crew hauls her out and shout her praises, she lands in front of regina absolutely covered head to toe in cylon gunk, and manages to give her something of a nonchalant glare anyway. “what? here to yell at me again? put me in the brig?”

the crew has the good sense to step back and get back to work.

“i don’t think you understand what’s happening, lieutenant."

“come again, madame president?”

regina steps forward, sharply. “i may not understand every military term, but i do know that being a relentless showboat is going to get this entire fleet killed before you can say _toaster.”_

swan puts her hands on her hips and she’s a striking picture in the grey glare of the flight deck. striking even to regina. she cracks a tired laugh. “yeah? and we’re alive right now anyway. oh, and tell that to the other guy who managed to score enough cylon tech to _really_ understand what we’re up against.”

regina tugs her lips up. “you better hope it’s worth it, nike,” she bites. sleepless nights roil in her gut and her chest burns, burns. “because every time we lose, _you_  lose, it could be the last.”

swan eyes bore into hers. she salutes her, slowly. “yes, sir.”

she turns to leave, tracking gunk all the way, and that something constricts again. “swan,” she says, wary and full. “henry will be…glad to know that you’re alive.”

she turns back, a small smile crossing her face. “tell him there’s a dessert ration with his name on it.”

before she can answer, swan turns again and leaves.

regina steels herself against the day, against tomorrow and however many they have left, and walks on. her heels click against the floor, and she doesn’t think of grassy fields and quiet routines that can’t exist.

5.

regina mills is a good frakking president.

she’s collected in moments she needs to be, but there’s a fire behind her eyes that seems endless, boundless. it builds when people don’t get that they. will. _die, they will never, ever get to earth if they won’t listen to her._ it’s in the set of her jaw, her shoulders reared forward, the dangerous hand she puts on a hip.

and boy is there shit she does that emma doesn’t agree with, but.

it’s why they’re all alive.

(and it’s why regina breathes out exhaustion in the aftershocks. not that emma doesn’t believe she can’t handle it. not anymore. not that emma is. worried. worried enough to wonder if she ever frakking sleeps, worried enough to memorize her extension number, just in case–)

and well, not that emma would ever tell her. to her face, anyway.

but maybe to her son. 

who’s taken with emma, for some reason. or well, with nike. the victorious hero. the one the fleet needs her to be. _(ha)_.

“my birth mom, you know, she’s probably…” henry swallows and ripples the pages of his book. “you know, what happened to everyone probably happened to her. but i don’t _know_ that because _she_ didn’t tell me that–”

“henry,” emma says, and folds her hands in front of her. she swallows. “kid, there’s something…i need to talk to you about.”

the next time they solve some crisis– _water_ of all things–regina catches her arm on the way into the raptor. the corners of her eyes soften. a breeze from the ice planet sweeps hair across her shoulders.

emma’s holding her damn breath.

“thanks,” she says. she smiles, small and sure. her eyes turn bright. a new president regina mills that emma has never met before. “for…thanks.”

“too many people have lost someone,” emma says quietly with a shrug big enough to catch whatever’s building up in her throat. “you shouldn’t lose each other to some…hypothetical.”

mills keeps looking at her, something far-off catching her eyes. “we don’t have those anymore, do we, lieutenant,” she says. 

before she can answer, mills walks into the raptor.

6.

 _who does swan have_ , regina thinks before she can stop herself into the dark of her barracks, her son snoring softly across the room.

7. 

“no,” regina says, because lieutenant emma swan is _still_ not the commander, even when she acts more like a commander than nolan.

swan grits her teeth and cocks her head. “then we’re going to lose half the fleet, _madame president.”_

she smiles and straightens out a stack of papers–numbers, food inventories, the lifeblood of the fleet. “at least you managed the title right even if you refuse to honor it, nike.” she lets the syllable roll slowly, lips curling around the _i._

swan’s face turns stony, turns red. “then think about your _son–”_

too far.

_“get out.”  
_

she doesn’t. she lifts her arms, and her voice goes softer. “we’re on the same side, regina. we always have been.”

regina presses a hand against her side, breathing, one, two, three. “out.”

8.

she finds swan by the memorial wall. flight suit hanging off her waist, and her arms are half wrapped around herself.

she’s not looking at anyone in particular.

“isn’t it your sleep cycle?” regina says, coming up next to her. without meaning to, her eyes begin to search the smiling faces for a picture that isn’t there. a picture regina isn’t sure she wants memorialized.

swan sighs. “they look so frakking human.”

regina lifts her head, and holds herself. “well, they’re not. that much is clear.”

“it’s not that, madame president.” she feels emma turns. “she… _zelena_  or, whatever she’s really called, she had. conviction. motivation. she was carrying out orders, sure, but she…wanted to.”

she thinks of zelena’s eyes now, bright and wild when they hauled her into a cell. her palms itch, and she she shakes her head against another onslaught of tears.  “…the cylons want us dead, swan.” she finally turns and searches swan’s eyes now. “whatever you want to think, whatever’s _true._ they will still want us dead. that’s what matters now.”

swan snorts softly. “how frakking human.” she rubs the back of her neck and looks at regina again. “don’t you have a debrief with nolan?”

regina swallows. “i do.” she watches the lines on emma’s forehead, the arm still tucked around her waist. “i suppose i wanted to make sure that you…were handling things. 

swan raises a brow. “handling things?” she laughs fully now, warm. regina’s stomach tigthens. she’s not sure she’s ever heard swan laugh before. “concerned about my emotional health, now?”

“perish the thought,” regina quips. she shifts on her feet, and clears her thraot. “well, i see you’re not drowning in the bottle, lieutenant, so…” she gestures. “i’ll just…”

“thanks,” swan says quickly. “sorry, i mean. for before. for believing me about zelena. i know that was difficult, but–”

“not every day a cylon pretends to be your half-sister.” she stretches out her palm in front of her, and stares at it. “it was ridiculous, wishful thinking in the first place.” 

“still.”

she looks up and swan’s eyes are bright. her brow softens. her arms have dropped from her waist. regina can’t deal with that, anything like that. 

she shakes her head, and steps away. she steels her voice to something casual and sharp. “goodnight, lieutenant.”

9.

after they find the cylon base, after emma dons her flight-suit emblazoned _NIKE_  in the fleet’s colors and her viper squad blasts those toasters to the void they came from, david is looking at them, looking at _her,_  with pride beaming lights on his face. the crew is cheering and no one looks half in the grave for once. someone’s even passing around frakking _champagne._ who knows where they got it.

president mills is laughing too, clapping along with them, part of the crew, part of the team. it’s a sight to behold, and emma lets herself hold onto the thought. henry is jumping up and down beside her, having been allowed on the _galactica_ to join the celebration.

“to _captain_  emma swan! for getting the hell out of dodge and bringing the fleet to safety once again.”

everyone laughs and–

suddenly, mills’ go wide, mouth slack and brow wrinkled in horror over the thrum of the cheers, and emma opens her mouth to–

pain bursts in her sternum. her fingers come back red.

the last thing she sees is david holding a gun, smoking softly at the barrel. face blank, blank, blank.

10.

“i didn’t…” david frowns, and his voice is wobbly. he furiously wipes at his eyes, his whole face. “frak, regina, i don’t even _remember_ doing it! 

regina laughs, dark and low, and shaking, shaking all over, swan’s, _emma’s_ blood matting on her nice, mother-approved caprican shirt. she stops pacing and steps up to him, a snarl slashed across her face. “you don’t remember trying to _murder_ your standing XO? you don’t remember–”

“no!” david shouts, and wraps a hand around the bars. “damnit, mills! i’ve worked with you for six months! why would i–”

regina puts both hands on the bars and laughs in his face, doesn’t care if she spits at him. “i think you know why, _david._ and if she,” her voice breaks unexpectedly and she re-sets the snarl. “if the captain dies _,_ i will destroy you toaster bastards back into the shrapnel you were born from.”

11. 

there’s a scream, her name, someone is screaming her name but its muffled as though underwater, and a hand is outstretched trying to pull her up, the hand’s face obscured by a ripple, and–

she opens her eyes and squints against harsh lights and sees henry, quietly reading on the chair next to her, his legs too short to reach the floor. she smiles and something in her sternum is warm and aches, aches, aches.

something in her sternum also frakking _hurts_.

“henry,” she rasps, “what–”

then, she remembers. she remembers. she presses her fist onto her forehead and presses it against her mouth when a sob wells up like vomit.

“nike?” henry says, and closes his book in an instant. “ _emma?_ emma! doctor whale, emma’s awake!”

emma bites her first and swallows it.  she has to. “hey, kid.”

“it’s alright, emma,” henry says and fidgets with his book. he gives a watery smile. “commander nolan…” he frowns and his brows furrow into something too vicious. “the _cylon_ didn’t get away.”

emma nods and the second henry walks away to find whale, she lets out a sob. it shakes her whole body. shakes it cold.

12.

swan’s walking with a cane and her face is sallow, but. she’s okay. she’s alive, pushing through every step with the strength regina has come to know.

she’s okay.

regina breathes sharply through her nose, and beckons her in with an arm and a head tilt to the couch. 

“captain swan,” she says. she plasters on the most genuine politician’s smile she can muster. “doctor whale, and henry, have told me you’re expected to make a full recovery.”

swan laughs lightly, and winces. “sure as frak doesn’t feel like it, but yeah.” she extends her cane out and slowly lowers herself to the couch, holding her sternum all the way. regina sits after her, and crosses her legs.

swan winces again, and looks up her. quirks a brow. “why did you call me up here, madame president?”

regina reaches for the box on the table, and hands it to emma. eyebrow firmly in place, emma slowly opens the box and her eyes slowly widen as she takes in what type of pin is attached to the velvet. “regina…sorry, madame president, i…don’t think i.” she thins her lips. “i don’t think i’m–”

“captain emma swan, this isn’t some charity prize. _you,_  yes, you with your stubbornness, your constant, infuriating insubordination, your–

“having fun talking me up, mills?” there’s a small smile on her lips, but her eyes are big and shining and there’s a crease between her brow.

she takes a deep breath. “as i was saying, you with all _that_ , have shown great leadership. you are one of the reasons the fleet still flies, captain. w–they need you right now.” she tilts her head again. “once you make that full recovery, will you accept this duty?”

swan stares forward, stricken. she lets out a bark of laughter. “i was about to quit the fleet, you know. before. maybe. i was thinking about it. nolan…” she clears her throat, and keeps staring.

“i was two steps away from quitting politics,” regina says, unintentionally softer. she shifts her crossed legs. “then again, i always was.” she catches swan’s eyes. “i’ll give you twenty-four hours to–”

“no…wait,” she picks up the pin and turns it over. she clenches it in her hand and smiles, though the crease between her brow remains. “i’ll do it. commander swan? better ring than captain, i think.”

regina smiles back, real this time.

**

(she laughs. “there’s a reason that’s a _myth_ , emma. there’s no saviors, just…people. making decisions, making sure one of them is right. hoping one of them is right. we don’t have time for peace anymore."

“how about hoping for hope, regina?”

“maybe. maybe that.”)


End file.
